


atlanta never looked the same

by voodoochild



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:26:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/pseuds/voodoochild
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Bill Adama knows about Laura Roslin, and one he only thinks he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	atlanta never looked the same

**Author's Note:**

> All the thanks in the world goes to tzikeh, who went above and beyond the call of beta-ly duty. The story and section titles come from the following songs: "Secretariat" by Jeffrey Foucault; "Have You Heard" by Thea Gilmore; "The Way You Look Tonight" by Frank Sinatra; "Mississippi" by Train; "Woman King" by Iron &amp; Wine; "Samson" by Regina Spektor; and "Amie" by Damien Rice.

_I. you're mistaken to want something to cling to_

He'd severely underestimated her.

She is a schoolteacher, a woman more used to negotiating the square-dance of the classroom. She is supposed to be thinking in quantifiable terms. Approximately 50, 000 survivors divided by twelve Colonies equals 4, 166 per colony, and they don't have that kind of room aboard Galactica.

He will not turn his ship into a slaver, will not turn his crew over to be mismanaged and misappropriated by the former Secretary of Education. He will not allow her to turn Saul, Kara, Boomer, Gaeta, or anyone else into square pegs for her to pound into round holes. He will not allow it, and frak it all, she's already taken his son from him. She can't have anyone else.

But from the moment he walks onto Colonial One, he knows that the woman he shut down with a speech on Galactica is gone. In her place is a composed, brilliant politician who cuts his legs out from under him with eight little words and a tone of voice harsher than his own. She chooses her words as carefully as he does not. She will not rise to his bait, nor allow him to draw her into a shouting match. And she pulls absolutely no punches.

She says they have to make a run for it. She wants to run away when they should be mounting a counterattack - giving the Cylons everything they can handle. He doesn't even know why he's considering taking anything she says seriously; unless schoolteachers are trained in the art of war, the woman has no experience as a military tactician.

But the fact remains that she is President. She wants to make the hard decisions when she's barely been President for 24 hours? So be it. He can't tell her any different, not if he doesn't want to be guilty of that "military coup" accusation she'd thrown.

It just hurts to know that Lee would rather follow her than his own father.

She walks out on him, directing that assistant of hers - what's his name again? - to show him back to the hangar bay. He looks back through the doorway at her, watching her sit down on one of Colonial One's plush flight chairs.

And then, she drops her poker face - so convincing that he didn't know she had one - and he sees her for the first time. She pulls the blazer more tightly around her, shivering. Her hands shake as she folds them on her lap. She bites her lower lip occasionally, a nervous habit that he swears he doesn't find endearing. She is a strong woman holding it together with all she has, because she was never supposed to be President and everyone knows it. But maybe, just maybe, everyone's wrong.

He knows that it's probably not a good idea to bet against someone as unpredictable as Laura Roslin, though.

~*~*~*~

_II. won't you keep that breathless charm_

She is, both figuratively and literally, a magnificent dancer.

He listened to her over the wireless, listened as she deftly built up Gaius Baltar as a better alternative than Tom Zarek, and waltzed her way through a vote count he knew would swing in her favor. She'd had to cut her losses - Wallace Grey was a good guy, but no politician - and though it had hurt her to do it, Laura Roslin had screwed him over but good.

She's had practice in rolling the hard six, after all.

He watches the celebration with pure pride. This is what those 247 thirty-three minute jumps were for. This is what the water rationing was about. This is what they've crossed space and Cylons and each other for.

To watch Lee trip over himself at the sight of Kara in a dress and Saul toast to the good times with Ellen. To let Chief dance with Boomer in view of everyone without the gossip mill rolling. To let Crashdown and Socinus make idiots out of themselves with no consequences other than Racetrack drinking them under the table. To let Gaius Baltar savor his victory, and to keep Tom Zarek from starting his revolution.

And to see Laura Roslin stand there with a smile on her face, humming along to one of his, and apparently her, favorite songs.

He makes his way over to her, and bypasses any small talk in favor of permitting himself the indulgence of asking her for a dance. They've been edging around this for months, and if he's really honest with himself, he's spent every one of them wondering how well they would move together.

And he has his answer.

She moves with an easy grace, insinuating herself against him with that signature directness he's always appreciated in her Presidency. She slides one hand around his shoulder, intertwines her fingers with his other hand, and matches him move for move. Her hair tumbles around her shoulders as sings the words to the song, appealingly off-key.

He knew she could dance. He now knows that talent does not extend to singing, and that he doesn't really mind in the least.

~*~*~*~

_III. but she don't flow to me_

He should have known she would call his bluff.

But she's gone too far. Stealing a military asset (and Kara, Godsdammit, that's two of his children she's taken from him now) and sending them off on some insane plot to find a mythical arrow and a mythical planet. Telling Kara the truth about Earth, just as he'd almost gotten her back again after grounding her. Turning Lee traitor and throwing his tags in with her and her religious nonsense.

They've drawn their lines in the sand, now. Laura, Lee, and Kara on one side, he and Saul on the other. He can't punish Kara; she's out of his hands and has been ever since he told her to leave his quarters or he was going to hit her, just like her mother had. He can do little about Lee except put him in irons and keep him far away from Laura or anyone else. He can't give either of them orders and pretend it's going to be okay.

But he can do what Laura had threatened him with, back during the Holocaust, and declare martial law. As long as he's around, the Fleet will have a leader - one who isn't chasing prophecy instead of taking care of their people.

The only thing is, it hurts.

All around him, his children, biological or otherwise, are falling apart. Boomer swears she didn't check if her weapon was loaded, and he knows she's lying. Chief, Socinus, Crashdown and Cally are missing, and Gods know if they're alive or dead. Kara is off chasing windmills and Lee is in chains. And Dee, Gaeta, and Saul are still looking to him for leadership he's not sure he's capable of providing.

It hurts, and it hurts more than he's ever imagined to put Laura in Galactica's brig and lock the cell between them.

She doesn't rail at him about the injustice he's committing. She doesn't bring up military coups and dictatorships. She doesn't speak to him at all - just walks into the cell like it's her office on Colonial One, and faces him as the marine locks the door. She doesn't have to speak, because everything she could possibly say is all there in her eyes, and it's not the furious rage or cold acceptance he'd expected.

It is understanding, and it is pain. Neither of them ever wanted to come to this point. Neither of them ever wanted to draw down on each other and see who was left standing. This time, it was him.

He knows that she's let him win, and that if there is a next time, he will not be so lucky.

~*~*~*~

_IV. come down and start now to weep_

She told him not to give up hope.

The dying leader foretold in a prophecy he'd never believed in until she opened his eyes and made him see. President of 49,598 survivors of genocide, who ascended to power and caught hold of it with both hands until she couldn't hold it any more. The woman living out her last days, free from the lies she'd told and bound in the merciless grip of terminal cancer and hallucinogenic drugs to numb the pain.

A woman who had long since forgotten the meaning of hope.

And she was telling him not to give it up.

She clasped a small black box with her hands, and his heart stopped when he realized what it held. Admiralship. No longer Commander William Adama of the Galactica, but Admiral William Adama of the Colonial Fleet. He didn't want to know if she were only doing this to engineer a successor in event of her death.

As she explained how Billy had acquired the insignia, he knew it wouldn't be enough. Not when she was like this, pale in her severe brown suit, the heavy cloth hanging off her thinning frame. Not when she spoke from cracked lips and even through the chamalla, the pain shone in her eyes. Not when she couldn't even stand.

He helped her up, keeping his arms locked around her. Told her not to give up hope, either, and kissed her. A bitter, medicinal taste lingered on her lips, as if he needed to be reminded that she was dying. It was probably a large reason for kissing her in the first place, the desire to kiss her at least once before she was gone coupled with not knowing any other way of expressing how much those admiral's pips mean to him. But she smiled at him, and it was almost enough to make him believe that she's getting well.

She walks away with Billy supporting her, and he turns his face, so she doesn't have to see the tears he can't hold back. One would think she'd be the one crying; railing at the Gods for this curse they've bestowed upon her.

He knows better, though. She's stronger than that - stronger than him.

~*~*~*~

_V. and kissed me till the morning light_

He hasn't felt good, solid ground under his feet in three years.

She had teased him - playing in the sand, Bill? - but he didn't care, because it they had a planet to call their own. He should be taking care of his ship, but you can't live your entire life with only steel bulkheads to stare at and some space-proof glass between you and the black.

Galactica is empty. No Lee and Kara, bickering like the children they haven't been in a long time. No Saul, enjoying every minute of Ellen's manipulations. No Chief or Cally. Barely any crew left. New Caprica has soil and sunlight, grass and trees and her.

Laura.

She should no longer surprise him. But really, who expects the former (and Gods, he sometimes wishes he'd let her rig that election) President of the Twelve Colonies to show up at a ceremony given by the current President bearing really good weed and wearing a stoplight-red dress?

And he is off duty for a few days.

So he loses what little sense of propriety he has left after Kobol and cancer and assassinations, and slips off with her. They end up behind the dance floor on a makeshift pallet, where they lie side by side and smoke and dance around what they really want: to move planetside, to build a cabin, to enjoy themselves for a change.

And then she pulls him into her tent and kisses him. A gift it took her months to reciprocate, and he wonders how he survived without it for so long. He doesn't care if it's the booze and the weed and the planet speaking for them, because this is Laura and Bill, no titles, no obligations except to each other.

It is not what he expected. It is slow and lazy - Laura arching under his fingers and tongue, soft gasps and moans urging him on as much as her grip on his hair and her nails down his back. It is harsh and demanding - the relentless canting of her hips as she moves atop him, his hands leaving bluish-purple marks on her thighs and ass. It is smooth and stuttering, torrid and tender. It is everything he should have figured it would be, between him and Laura.

They fit together so well - sweat-slick limbs intertwined with an ease he's never experienced. She gives him that beautiful, contented smile, and promptly drops off to sleep, head atop his chest.

He knows that if he'd met Laura Roslin twenty-five years ago, he wouldn't be a divorced workaholic with terrible child-raising skills.

~*~*~*~

_VI. tell it like you still believe_

He is no longer the man he once was, and it is her fault.

She took a man who once led by a sin of omission, and made him see that there is truth even in the most blatant of lies. She forced him to realize that morality and rules are concepts that a leader must set aside when it comes to the well-being of their people. She broke through every single one of his barriers and made him build new ones. She made him torture and kill and consider assassination a preferable alternative to justice.

And he is grateful for it, many times over, but he wishes that the wisdom she imparted hadn't come with such a cost.

Lee.

Sharon.

Kara.

All of them, lost. To rebellion, hatred, and Gods-knew-what, and he doesn't know how much longer he can hold it together. She's rapidly becoming his only constant, his only guiding star by which to measure his humanity. As long as she can do what he does, and worse, without flinching, he believes they can overcome anything.

Anything at all.

It is late one night when he finds her in his quarters. She's slipped away from Tory and Colonial One to hole up with a book of old Virgon poetry and has hijacked his couch. He's gotten tired of the snide remarks from the Baltar supporters criticizing him for not taking a watch, so he assigned himself third watch over Saul's objections.

He should have listened to Saul, because he's probably going to collapse.

She looks up, about to speak, but he must look like three kinds of hell because she just closes the book and stands up, guiding him to his rack. She slides buttons through buttonholes, removes his uniform jacket, then strips him of his tanks, belt, and shoes before pushing him gently onto the bed. He rolls to his stomach as her strong hands glide over his neck and back, patiently unwinding the knots they find. He's done this for her, after long nights she's spent bent over paperwork or a podium.

Lulled by the steady motions of her hands, he sighs, finally letting some of the tension ebb out of him. Usually they'd channel it into sex, but he's exhausted, and she understands. It's been the other way around a few times, and he's never pushed the issue with her; they do enough dueling and battling in their professional lives that they don't need to bring it into their personal ones.

And then she whispers right into his ear eight little words that almost stop his heart.

"You're a Cylon, but I still love you."

He knows - has known for a while - that at least half of that sentence is not true.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Be My Mirror, My Sword, My Shield (The Girl All the Bad Guys Want Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/86294) by [lls_mutant](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lls_mutant/pseuds/lls_mutant)




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